libertarians

Libertarians: wrong on immigration and much more

Libertarians can be divided into two basic groups: "cosmotarians" (example: Reason Magazine), and their country cousins like Lew Rockwell. The former group leans to the crazy and corrupt side, while the latter group's craziness is more principled.

Another split is between "big-L Libertarians" (those in the Libertarian Party) and "small-l libertarians" (the rest). The difference is that the former group's insane delusions are codified, while the latter group's insane delusions are wider in spectrum.

There are also those like the Tea Parties who have subsumed libertarian ideas. True libertarians tend to dislike such people, especially if they combine libertarian-leaning economic ideas with social conservatism.

One major reason I oppose libertarians of all stripes is due to their unworkable position on social welfare. Most Americans support social welfare programs broadly defined, and even more would support them if they were taken away from them. Imposing libertarian economic ideas on the U.S. would not result in their addled utopian visions. Instead, millions of Americans would face undue hardships, perhaps resulting in riots and even some form of socialist revolution. Taking a little bit of socialism away (the current system) could end up in a whole lot of socialism.

Libertarians also tend to favor free trade, something that's had benefits for many, huge benefits for a few, but that's also had a negative impact on millions of Americans. The cosmotarian types support that out of ideology but also because their benefactors stand to benefit from it.

Another reason I oppose libertarians is because they tend to lie and smear. Libertarians are utopians, and in their minds anyone who opposes them is standing in the way of utopia. They also have few if any principles or sense of ethics. Thus - even while pretending to support liberty for all - they're willing to lie and smear their opponents in an attempt to silence them.

But, if I had to choose just one, the main reason I oppose libertarians is due to immigration. Almost all libertarians are very bad on immigration, with some supporting literal open borders. The entries below detail how libertarian ideas on immigration would not work and would have a highly negative impact on almost everyone in the U.S.

[SEE 6/17/14 UPDATE BELOW]
"The Kronies" is a series of slick, live action videos that promote a libertarian message. The effort comes complete with not only its own site, but a fake site for the "company" behind the figures, a "Chimera Global Holdings Inc.".

The Koch family-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University has released their "Freedom in the 50 States" report [1].
According to them, the freest state is North Dakota, followed by South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, the least free state is New York, followed by California, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Rhode Island.

In this post, I'll show why Ed Krayewski - an associate editor at Reason Magazine's "Reason 24/7" - isn't credible and isn't patriotic. The last is a serious charge, but keep reading because I'll make it stick.
Krayewski offers "5 Reasons to Grant Amnesty to Illegal Immigrants/It's time to get serious and implement the only immigration reform that will work" [1].
One of his reasons is this:

The video below shows Rep. Pete King fuming about the GOP voting down a relief bill for victims of Hurricane Sandy, saying among other things (link):
"Turning your back on people who are starving and freezing is not a Republican value"

Every Christmas, the lamestream media plays movies that only appear to have a heartwarming message. Instead, the messages of those movies is pure, socialist evil.
The worst offender is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
That movie isn't a heartwarming tale of redemption: it's just redistributionist propaganda. Instead of celebrating the business acumen of a Job Creator, the movie celebrates him redistributing his money away to undeserving moochers. Takers like Tiny Tim never gave anyone a job, only Job Creators like Scrooge can do that.

Those in the libertarians/fiscal conservative sphere tend to put loyalty to money ahead of loyalty to country. An example from earlier this year is at the link, and another example is offered by the case of Gérard Depardieu. That French actor has "gone Galt" by giving up his French citizenship and moving to Belgium in part to avoid high taxes ( peekURL.com/zEf4J2g ).

Elizabeth Price Foley is a constitutional law professor and author of the book The Tea Party: Three Principles. Over at the site of Glenn Reynolds, she offers a guest post [1] that even someone like Sean Hannity would realize is clueless:

Time for another edition of Billionaires Know Best.
This edition features an ad that Thomas Peterffy of Interactive Brokers (net worth over $4 billion) will spend $5 to $10 million running in swing states. In the ad (video below), the Hungarian-born Peterffy complains about, among other things, the non-existent threat of socialism.
First the transcript of the ad, followed by a discussion of why it's wrong:

To help you answer those questions, take a look at the let's-defenestrate-noblesse-oblige letter (link) that a major Job Creator - the very rich timeshare magnate David Siegel of Westgate Resorts - sent to his employees, excerpts at [1]. He created the letter by editing an even more explicit similar letter from 2008 [2].

Over at Slate, Matt Yglesias continues to offer crazy, libertarians-influenced immigration ideas. His latest idea thinks big: what he's proposing would harm hundreds of millions - perhaps billions - of people around the world.

[SEE IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW]
The video below [1] shows Mitt Romney speaking at a meeting of potential donors and turning his back on half the U.S. His comments are truly anti-American: he's smearing half the U.S. as welfare queens and moochers.
Here's a transcript of the video:

Fiscal conservatives have influence far outstripping their numbers [1]. That isn't because their ideas are good for the U.S., but because their ideas are rarely examined in depth. You'd be hard-pressed to find fiscal conservatives being walked through all the impacts of their policies [2].
Let's change that.
Here are 27 questions for fiscal cons, and you're urged to go to appearances by those who adhere to that ideology and ask them.

I'm more (traditionally) liberal on immigration than Matt Yglesias of Slate: I want to raise wages and working conditions, while Yglesias peddles libertarian concepts designed to reduce wages and working conditions.

Earlier this month, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship in a move that most have considered a way to save taxes (even if he denies it). Fiscal conservatives proceeded to show that - to them - patriotism has a price tag. See the link for several examples and an explanation of why we don't want people like Saverin in the U.S. to begin with.

On April 26, 2012, the Cato Institute will be conducting an all-day conference ("Is Immigration Good for America?") supporting massive immigration. I urge anyone who'll be in the Washington DC area to attend with the goal of discrediting them as will be described below.

This site has perhaps the most open commenting policy on the internet. I don't need to delete or moderate comments because I make good, honest arguments and if someone disagrees I can defend my ideas.
For a counterexample to the above, see Huffington Post contributor Radley Balko.

Earlier this year, spending by the Department of Education was cut by $750 million at least temporarily by ending or cutting back literacy and other programs. One of those affected was the organization Reading Is Fundamental; all the $24.8 million they were getting from the feds was eliminated.

The reader will forgive me if I admit to being momentarily taken aback by Glenn Reynolds referring to potentially millions of his fellow citizens as "parasites"; given his history I shouldn't be surprised that he'd write this [1]:
WILL AMERICA SEE EUROPE-STYLE RIOTS? Newsweek sounds hopeful, but in America, unlike Europe, it’s usually the taxpayers who are behind the revolutions, not the parasites.

Ron Paul's latest book ("Liberty Defined") shows that his position on immigration is not only bad, but in the book he uses some of the same old immigration talking points as other Beltway hacks. People don't use canards like jobs Americans wont do naturally; either Paul has been compromised, or he's corrupt (selling out his principles for political gain), or someone else wrote the immigration chapter for him and he never saw it (ha!) For an example from another politician, remember this Meg Whitman speech. She didn't create what she said herself, she got it from someone else. And, that's...

Last night, Congress finally did something about massive government spending (link), the single most important issue ever to face the U.S. and the only thing keeping us from continued hope, growth, opportunity and prosperity.
Er, maybe not. And, in fact, others used to agree. For instance, consider this table showing the average number of monthly mentions of the listed terms at HotAir [1]. In 2007 there were an average of just 8 mentions per month of the word "deficit" at HotAir. By 2011, there were an average of 222 mentions per month:
"deficit"
"spending"
"budget"
2011 (4 months)
222...

If you've been following our extensive tea parties coverage, you'll know where this is going (and if you're a teapartier, you'll have no clue):
Last fall, [Institute for Liberty's] president, Andrew Langer, had himself videotaped [ peekURL.com/vM87wLC ] on Long Wharf in Boston holding a copy of the Declaration of Independence as he compared Washington’s proposed tariff on paper from Indonesia and China to Britain's colonial trade policies in 1776.
That's from "Odd Alliance: Business Lobby and Tea Party" by Mike McIntyre of the New York Times (link) about how the Institute for Liberty and...

The "Republican Liberty Caucus" ("RLC") is a nationwide, independent group of libertarians that present themselves as the "Conscience of the Republican Party". Think of them as a more established, slightly saner, slightly more principled, non-"NeoCon" version of the tea parties. Their policies - like those of other libertarians - are also a cruel joke, especially on California.
Like other libertarians, one of their policies - open borders [1] - renders all of their other policies moot. The loose/open borders they support sharply reduces the chances that we'll ever have limited government...

Pima Community College has released the video from Jared Loughner that resulted in his explusion from that school (article here, embedded below, [1]). In it he walks around that College at night and narrates why it's his "genocide school" and how their actions will result in him becoming homeless. He seems particularly agitated about having received a "B" grade in a sociology class.
As I've stated many times, about the only political inclination that can be derived is that of a deranged extremist libertarian. While I expect some on the Left to claim he says things similar to the tea parties,...

On Good Morning America, Zach Osler - a former friend of Gabrielle Giffords shooter Jared Lee Loughner - said the following about Loughner (video below):
He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right.
However, in the same interview, Osler admits not having seen Loughner for two years. Obviously, a lot can happen in two years, but don't expect partisan hacks to acknowledge that or in some cases even mention that Osler's information is two years out of date.
Osler's claims also contradict...

Q. Is Jared Lee Loughner linked to the Tea Party, conservative, or libertarian movements?
A. At this time, there's no indication that Loughner was a member of any organized political movement. He was a registered independent who hadn't voted in 2010 (link). The DHS claim that he was linked to the white racial separatist group AmRen is false. Given what we know now, the chances of him being welcomed as a member of any group outside the far fringe is remote [1]. Given his history, the chances that even the teaparties would welcome him to their meetings is slim. He might have been welcomed to...

UPDATES BELOW
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and several others were shot earlier today and there are conflicting reports on whether she and others were killed. Per this:
The gunman, who may have come from inside the Safeway, walked up and shot Gifford in the head first, "point blank". According to [an eyewitness, Steven Rayle], who is a former ER doctor, Gifford was able to move her hands after being shot... After shooting Gifford, the gunman opened fire indiscriminately for a few seconds, firing 20-30 rounds and hitting a number of people, including a kid no older than 10 years old... The gunman...

Bad news for libertarians and the tea parties: a new Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll shows little support for fiscal conservative policies (link):
[The poll] shows Americans skeptical of deficit-cutting proposals laid out by the chairmen of a commission appointed by the White House. In the survey, 57% of respondents said they were uncomfortable with gradually raising the Social Security retirement age to 69 over the next 60 years. Some 41% said they were somewhat or very comfortable with the idea.
Roughly 70% were uncomfortable with making cuts to programs such as Medicare, Social...

Roger Simon of Pajamas Media offers "Is California Hopeless?" [1]. It's yet another article by fiscal conservatives and free market types in which they fail to account for the highly negative role that their support for massive immigration has played in bringing California to its current state. And, not only does he fail to reveal his ideology's role in heavily damaging California, but he even wants us to suffer:
The only solution is for California to suffer — and to suffer badly. The citizens of this state need a serious beat down. This was the place where Jane Fonda popularized “No gain...

Just after winning the Senate race from Kentucky, Rand Paul told Wolf Blitzer the following (video below and at peekURL.com/vufapvr ):
PAUL: I would say that they must be in favor of a second American depression, because if you raise taxes to that consequence, that's what will happen in this country. Raising taxes in the midst of a recession would be a disaster for our economy. And anybody who proposes such a policy really is, I think, unfit to be making decisions.
BLITZER: What if they just raised taxes on the richest, those making more than 250,000 dollars a year?
PAUL: Well, the thing is,...

Twice each year, the Koch family conducts strategy meetings with corporate and thought leaders to plan how to advance their "free market" ideology. ThinkProgress has the guest list and program for their June 2010 meeting (in Aspen), and, while immigration isn't mentioned, many of the known attendees are on the wrong side.
I don't normally recommend anything at ThinkProgress, but in this case I'll suggest taking a look at their post and downloading the PDF.
The New York Times has a related report here; from that:
The participants in Aspen dined under the stars at the top of the gondola run on...